DRY WIND (Vento seco)

Provocateur Daniel Nolasco's narrative feature debut follows the yearnings (sometimes kinky, sometimes tender) of Sandro, a shy, hunky bear who spices up his mundane life as a factory manager with a series of explicit sexual encounters – both real and imagined. His routine of work, football, trade union meetings, cigarette breaks, jigsaw puzzles, and partying, as well as the relationship with his semi-regular fuck buddy Ricardo, are about to be unsettled by the arrival of Maicon, an alluring and clouded-in-mystery motorcycle-riding hunk.

Amidst a background of political unrest, Sandro’s giddy array of fetishes and fantasies (and even the prospect of love) come dazzlingly to life in a world melding Tom of Finland iconography inside a Pink Narcissus-inspired wonderland. Tableaux vivant-like scenes feature people in leather and latex and fetishistic images of chrome-plated motorcycles. The film’s blend of sobriety and artificial exaggeration, as well as its witty use of contradictory music and slow dissolves, makes it feel like a hot, dusty summer, adorned with male bodies full of passion and desire.

This film contains scenes of explicit sexual content.